476 General Notes. [May 
that we reproduce here the substance of the account found in the 
fifth annual report of the station. 
After repeated observations it was found that the loss by smut 
the past year in an oat-field upon the station was about eight and 
a half per cent. The question of the transmission of smut from 
crop to crop was taken up. Seed was procured from a very 
smutty field in another county and sown upon plats of ground 
variously situated. The results were as follows: Plat A, 28.81 
per cent. ; plat B, 30.86 per cent. ; plat C, 11.68 per a ; plat D, 
21.49 per cent. The average for ‘all was 23.21 per 
Ten other plats were sown with seed from the same ‘field, but 
here the seed for each plat was treated with some substance sup- 
posed to be injurious to the spores of the smut. The results are 
given in the following table: 
Hours. Ee nr 
Plat E soaked in copper sulphate solution 17% 1.78 
ee E s é é 40 o 
"oD " iron sulphate solution 17% 16.51 
se H “ “6 se “ss 12. 15 
=e “caustic potash < 17% o 
Prg t sodium chloride * 17% 4.07 
ee n es potassic nitrate * 17% = =10,21 
-oL = cattle-urine 24 3:47 
MS cattle-urine + quicklime 24 3.38 
"No e castile soap + water and quicklime.......... 24 2.25 
Two of the applications, it will be noticed, proved to be effi- 
cacious remedies,—viz., the copper sulphate and the caustic pot- 
ash. The solution of coppe r sulphate consisted of four ounces 
dissolved in one gallon of water. The caustic io solution 
was made by dissolving half an ounce in one and a half pints of 
water. It is stated that the treatment of the grain with the va- 
rious substances seemed to produce no injurious effect upon the 
plants. 
Students as Collectors.—By the time this note comes to the 
readers of the NATURALIST hundreds of classes in botany will 
engaged in collecting material for study and for making into 
specimens. The amount of material gathered from the forests 
_and fields is no doubt enough each spring to make a pretty large 
herbarium. And yet, if all these dried plants were brought 
together, how few of them would be really desired by the pro- 
fessional botanists of the country! A few Ranunculacez; sev- 
krin oae: a ee ood many Sets and Rosaceæ; all the 
finds to be the easiest to obtain and aNs of all that come 
under his notice. The early sedges and grasses he pass 
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